Two kick-ass authors (Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith) of young adult (YA) fiction have recently written an open letter about their experiences seeking publication for a novel they co-authored in which the main character just happens to be gay:

We are published authors who co-wrote a post-apocalyptic young adult novel. When we set out to find an agent for it, we expected to get some rejections. But we never expected to be offered representation … on the condition that we make a gay character straight, or cut him out altogether.

Our novel Stranger has five viewpoint characters; one, Yuki Nakamura, is gay and has a boyfriend. Yuki’s romance, like the heterosexual ones in the novel, involves nothing more explicit than kissing.

An agent from a major agency, one which represents a bestselling YA novel in the same genre as ours, called us.

The agent offered to sign us on the condition that we make the gay character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to his sexual orientation.

Rachel replied, “Making a gay character straight is a line in the sand which I will not cross. That is a moral issue. I work with teenagers, and some of them are gay. They never get to read fantasy novels where people like them are the heroes, and that’s not right.”

The agent suggested that perhaps, if the book was very popular and sequels were demanded, Yuki could be revealed to be gay in later books, when readers were already invested in the series.

We knew this was a pie-in-the-sky offer – who knew if there would even be sequels? – and didn’t solve the moral issue. When you refuse to allow major characters in YA novels to be gay, you are telling gay teenagers that they are so utterly horrible that people like them can’t even be allowed to exist in fiction.

I was particularly pleased to see that the piece was not just a rant but an explicit call for change top-to-bottom in the industry (from writers to agents and publishers, to readers and reviewers). The authors’ point out how much teen literature continues to have white, hetero protagonists and ask how many of those characters have been whitened and straightened by the publishing industry afraid the book won’t sell. In order for this to change, they argue, readers need to convince publishers that they want books with more diverse, representative characters:

Please vote with your pocketbooks and blogs by buying, reading, reviewing, and asking libraries to buy existing YA fantasy/sf with LGBTQ protagonists or major characters. If those books succeed financially, more like them will be written, represented, and sold. Your reviews don’t have to be positive – any publicity is good publicity. Review on blogs, Amazon, Goodreads, anywhere you yourself read reviews.

As a number of folks (including the authors above) have pointed out, this goes beyond publishing queer fiction as a genre. It goes beyond throwing in a “gay best friend” so you can check that box and pat yourself on the back. As my friend Shoshana writes:

There are great (and not-so-great) works of “LGBT fiction” out there, and that’s awesome. But the mainstream needs to work on letting everybody in. YA needs more non-straight and not-sure-they’re-straight teens slaying dragons and worrying about their SATs. More kids in middle grade need to get grounded by their two moms, and yes, even kids in picture books need their wild flights of fancy to end in the comforting arms of both their dads. Whether you’re gay or straight, life is not all about sex, folks. It’s not even all about dating. Life is about all the things it’s about, and that’s true no matter whom you love, where you’re from, what you look like, whom you worship, what your abilities are, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So in the spirit of recommending/promoting awesome youth literature that isn’t heterocentrist (etc.), please share your favorite YA reads in comments and write a little about why you think they rock. When you were a teen, did you read books featuring characters whom you identified with? What aspects of identity were particularly important for you to find in your fiction? Were there specific characters whom you may or may not have identified with but who widened your realm of possibility for building a life for yourself on your own terms?

I might chime in later in comments with some of my own favorites, but I thought I’d get down off the soapbox first and let y’all have the floor.

14 Responses to “Quick Hit: Yes to Gay YA”

I was surprised that no one mentioned self-publishing as an option for these authors. If they publish their book as an e-book and it sells well, that would be a very persuasive argument for agents, publishers, booksellers, librarians, etc. about the demand for YA fantasy with gay characters. Going straight to digital is a very popular option these days for authors who failed to find a literary agents or whose books have been rejected by publishers—or who simply don’t want to deal with agents and traditional publishers and sell/market their book directly to readers.

I know that in my library, by the teen section, they have large bookmark type lists of recommended YA books, including one for LGBT books. One can pick up a copy of the list, or look up books at the adjacent catalog.

The only thing I question, Anna, is your statement that ” the main character just happens to be gay.” I’ve never written fiction, but my understanding is that nothing “just happens.” Everything that takes place in a work of fiction has been planned and chosen deliberately by the author. I give big props to these 2 authors for making the choice to create a gay main character, and I think that they’re absolutely right when they say that gay people need to be included in kids’ lit at all levels and in all roles. The white male heteronormative model is the default, but straight, white, or male should be chosen characteristics just like any others. Otherwise we fall into the “normal” vs “other” trap.

Becky, I understand that self-publishing could be a good option, but it also sounds to me like, “If you can’t get into the gentile country club, start your own.” That’s a solution of sorts, but it doesn’t address the exclusion of outsiders by the controlling group. The publishing industry has resisted all kinds of demographic changes in kids’ lit (remember how Jo Rowling had to publish under JKR so boys wouldn’t know that a woman wrote the first HP book?). It’s right to call them out on it.

YA didn’t exist so much as a separate category when I was a kid in the early to mid ’60′s. I loved “A Wrinkle in Time” because Meg was unlike any other female character I’d ever read: strong, creative, loving but not dependent. Recently, I thought Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” was terrific, but then, for me, Alexie can do no wrong.

@mischiefmanager, I didn’t mean to imply that the character was gay sans conscious decision-making by the author (although some of the writers I know would argue their characters have minds — and perhaps sexualities? — of their own!). What I meant was that there’s a difference between writing a story about someone being non-straight and writing a story about something else entirely in which one or more of the characters is queer.

but it also sounds to me like, “If you can’t get into the gentile country club, start your own.”

Oh, come on. Having your book represented by a “major literary agency” and published by one of the big 5 New York publishers is not a human right. Saying publishers are a “controlling group” gives them way too much power. Remember, the vast majority of books published in the US are done without literary agents or big publishing houses. There are MANY smaller, on-line, or niche publishers who publish things that big houses don’t publish and mainstream retailers don’t carry. It’s discouraging for authors to hear that gay characters are less saleable, but it’s not a human rights abuse perpetrated by The Man; no one is denying them a chance to publish their book because they are gay.

The agent thought the book was less saleable because of the gay characters. S/he is almost certainly right. It’s a tough world out there when library budgets are cut to the bone and retailers are stocking fewer books. And since a literary agent works on commission and does not earn money unless s/he sells the book, s/he may politely turn down something they think will not sell, or will offer suggestions about how to change it so it might sell. This happens all the time.

Which brings us back to Anna’s point about creating demand and showing there’s demand. Publishers and booksellers are in the business of making money, and are very responsive to demand.

@Becky: I knew you’d tear me a new one. Belonging to a country club isn’t a human right either, and I’m not saying it should be actionable when a publisher turns down a book because of gay content. But it surprises me that you’re letting the majors off the hook so easily. Since when is “we’re in business to make money” an acceptable excuse to promote bigotry? Would it have been okay 50 years ago to turn down a book that had a Jewish or African-American lead character?

@mischiefmanager and @BeckySharper, I think I come down on mm’s side with this one … while self-publishing is an awesome option and can, often, lead to increased notice and eventual publication, it’s still unacceptable that “make your gay character straight” is still seen as a viable way to make a book marketable. Yes, publishing is a business and it does come down to profits, but as mm points out that doesn’t mean we should just shut up and let bigotry go un-challenged. It’s not like self-publishing and being put out by Random House or whatever are equivalent … just like the existence of the Seven Sisters made it okay for places like Harvard or Yale or Columbia to be male-only institutions.

I absolutely think it’s important to prove that books with queer characters are marketable by voting with our pocketbooks. But I don’t think that means we shouldn’t simultaneously call the power brokers on their bullshit.

@MM: Publishing is not a non-profit or a public good that exists to give everyone their say. Publishers do sometimes publish books that they know are less likely to earn back the money invested in them, but you can’t do that often and expect to stay in business, especially now.

And while you’re bashing publishers, spare some ire for booksellers. Publishers are not the only ones who determine which books reach an audience—they do not sell their product directly to consumers, after all. Historically, when the bookseller (or even—gasp!—libraries) says “I don’t think there’s much of an audience for that”, and places a tiny order, or no order at all…the book’s going nowhere and it doesn’t matter how principled a stand the publisher took.

One of the good things about self-publishing an e-book is that the author doesn’t have to rely on the brick-and-mortar booksellers to get their work out to the public. It opens up a lot of doors for people whose books otherwise wouldn’t sell enough copies for a major house to publish them.

@anna: I think challenging bigotry is always good. But if you can’t get a mainstream publisher to publish your book—for whatever reason—many other options exist. Also, to the point of the original post, it wasn’t a publisher who said that the authors should change the character, it was a literary agent. S/he was basing his/her assessment on what s/he knew of the business, but the whole supply chain of literary agent-publisher-booksellers-readers is at issue here. It’s not just bigoted publishers holding all the power and keeping authors out of stores. It’s booksellers, libraries, and consumers who determine what will be on shelves. That’s why I think your point about creating demand and being vocal about it is key.

In response to anna’s original question, the book that struck me the hardest as a kid was “The Cat Ate My Gymsuit”. A fat girl as the protagonist, whose best friend was the pretty popular girl, got shaken up by an outside the box teacher in a conservative town and started the process of coming to terms with herself, her body, her parents, and the people around her. What I loved about it was that there was NOT a happy ending – but when they got knocked down they got back up. I don’t remember the details, I don’t even remember the protagonist’s name, because it’s been so long since I’ve seen it anywhere, but it really struck a nerve.

@Becky: Fair point about booksellers. I don’t recall booksellers being reluctant to carry YA books with gay characters when I worked there. We had many more complaints about the het sexual content of the Gossip Girls series and their ilk.

It disappoints but doesn’t surprise me that libraries in some areas won’t buy YA books with gay characters. People in the red states are still trying to ban Harry Potter, for Pete’s sake. We have a really outstanding library system here, but I can imagine that things are different elsewhere.

I don’t see the book business as any more culpable as the movie or tv or music businesses in terms of being gay-friendly. That’s just the business under discussion here. Again, I agree that getting your book published is not a right (although I’m sure some authors who feel otherwise). I feel that books have a unique role in moving our cultural and moral standards forward, but I sure don’t expect them to go broke doing it. I just hope that people with moral courage will continue to be found at all levels of the book business.

I’d been handselling the bejesus out of Steve Kluger’s My Most Excellent Year for months before it occurred to me that that could be seen as promoting an Agenda. It has a glorious coming-out story in it, but that’s one of its many merry plotlines, and it’s the composite that made me love it.

@Shoshana Thanks for stopping by! I haven’t read the Kluger, but I’ll have to check it out

@Becky I do agree with you that it’s a whole network of people up and down the supply/demand chain who are making book-by-book decisions to take on/publish/promote/stock and read certain books over others.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE that these authors want the character’s sexuality to be concrete from the first chapter. However, I do understand why sometimes it might be beneficial to make a character’s sexuality more of an unraveling development. This is only because I personally enjoyed (and still do) reading about characters who are exploring their sexuality. Coming out is such an exciting and often times traumatic experiences, and I really think there’s worth in telling that side of the story. Although, I’m guessing that this wasn’t the publisher’s intent…